Have an emergency? Go to the ER

Don’t avoid help because of Covid surge, doctors say

By Allison Marlow
Posted 9/10/21

Yes, the hospitals in Alabama are very busy.

But doctors are asking people to continue to come to the ER if they have an emergency. Early in 2020 when the pandemic first began to spread, emergency …

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Have an emergency? Go to the ER

Don’t avoid help because of Covid surge, doctors say

Posted

Yes, the hospitals in Alabama are very busy.

But doctors are asking people to continue to come to the ER if they have an emergency. Early in 2020 when the pandemic first began to spread, emergency room staffs noticed that people suffering from ailments like stroke and heart attack were waiting to seek help.

Now as hospitals are reporting record numbers of Covid cases, medical staffs are asking people not to wait or avoid the ER.

“We’re still seeing a little bit of people waiting. We’re telling people to please don’t ignore their chest pain or their abdominal pain,” said Dr. Adam Watterson, an emergency medicine specialist at Thomas Hospital, in Fairhope.

He said the intensity of the current load of COVID-19 patients just means that people need to be more patient with the check-in process.

“We can still do what we do, we have the capability to help you, you’ve just got to bear with us through the process, it’s different than it used to be and that’s where people get anxious and nervous,” he said.

Watterson urged people not to guess about their condition or even wait. It’s difficult, he said, for untrained individuals to triage an ailment appropriately. Waiting to seek help may cause more harm than good.

For individuals who need COVID-19 testing or help with respiratory symptoms such as cough, shortness of breath, sinus congestion, runny nose and fever, Infirmary Health has set up three Respiratory Evaluation Centers in Mobile, Daphne and Saraland. The clinics have helped ease some of the congestion in the ER and moved many of the non-emergency COVID-19 patients to a separate, specialized location.

Watterson said the summer surge of COVID-19 cases was so large that there was little any hospital system could do to overcome it quickly.

“We have equipment but didn’t necessarily have the square footage for that number of patients,” he said. “Plus, the public is not used to waiting long to be seen so there is a lot of frustration. We are doing the best we can with the cards we’ve been dealt.”

In August doctors across the state and the nation urged more individuals to take the vaccine. Alabama saw a 14 percent increase in the number of vaccinations from mid-August to Labor Day. Watterson said to manage the influx of the disease medical staffs need continued community support in the form of patience and personal mitigation efforts such as masking and vaccination.

He said often people don’t understand that masking and limiting exposure to the virus allows the hospitals to keep pace with the need, rather than become overwhelmed.

“If the community is spreading the virus and we have a lot more people come in, that’s going to affect the whole community. We need our whole community to buy into the process of risk mitigation so you can curb the spread and give our resources time to reload and for the facility and all of our medical staff to decompress,” he said.

He said slowing the spread is important locally and nationally as less caseloads give the federal government time to monitor and evaluate variants and create additional vaccinations if they are needed.

“We have a strong community here and a strong facility that wants us to do well,” he said. “But the demand has been so high and the numbers so daunting, it’s just hard to manage effectively and that’s across the board in all facets of the hospital.”